Cairo Tower is Egypt’s and North Africa’s highest building. It was Africa’s tallest tower for ten years until Hillbrow Tower in South Africa surpassed it in 1971.
The tower was created by Egyptian architect Naoum Shebib between 1956 and 1961 and was influenced by Ancient Egyptian architecture.
its partially open lattice-work design is meant to recall a pharaonic lotus plant, an ancient Egyptian emblem.
The tower is topped with a circular observation deck and a rotating restaurant with a view of Greater Cairo that rotates around its axis on occasion.
According to documents published by Major General Adel Shaheen, the funds for the construction of the tower came from the US government, via the CIA, which was represented by Kermit Roosevelt, and had given around $US1-3 million to Gamal Abdel Nasser as a personal gift in order to discourage him from supporting the Algerian Revolution and other African independence movements.
Faced with the bribe attempt, Nasser decided to publicly chastise the US government by transferring all of the funds to the Egyptian government for the construction of the tower, which he claimed would be “visible from the US Embassy just across the Nile, as a taunting symbol of Egypt’s, Africa’s, and the Middle East’s resistance.”
